Observations on what’s getting downvoted, with some dissected specimens

A look at the greatest misses of late, and some theorizing.

Happy Sunday everyone. This is a two-part post in which I explore a few of the most downvoted posts from the past week, as well as offer some observations about what kinds of things we're seeing downvoted generally. We remain committed to understanding how the system is working, so that we can make changes to improve it. By and large, we believe that the signal-to-noise ratio has increased, but we also note that some quality posts have not received recognition.

Below are the most downvoted posts from the last week. We won't make a habit of looking at these, and I'm not going to mention the authors' names, or link to them in context. The idea isn't to shame anyone, start a pile on, or anything of the sort. Rather, I thought it would be a good idea to share some insight into why a few comments received the votes they did.

The comments

"This is fantastic news! Who cares about worldwide hunger when we can spend trillions playing with rocks on Mars?!"

There are many reasons this post was downvoted, chief among them that the author has engaged in extreme hyperbole in a rather off-topic manner. As another reader points out later in that same discussion, NASA's budget is nowhere near trillions of dollars, nor is NASA's budget anywhere near enough to address worldwide hunger. Long story short, this is a troll post, and the readers weren't interested. As I'll expand upon in part II below, this post is of the "but I don't even have a TV" archetype.

The next post only rated -115 votes, which is still far beyond the -20 votes needed to collapse a post. But in this instance, the moderators also got involved. The story was "Too little, too late: Blockbuster gives up on trying to beat Netflix." The post in question looks to place the blame for Blockbuster's failure, but does the poster blame Blockbuster's lack of innovation, its customer service, or the difficult transition from being a brick-and-mortar to an Internet service provider? No, this poster decides to engage in some off-topic political trolling:

"Another victim of the Obama economy. If they can survive through inauguration day there are brighter skies ahead."

Unfortunately, another poster decided to take the bait, and once again the moderators got involved. This troll counter-fired,

"Judging by your comment, you must be the spawn of Mitt Romney. It takes intelligence to troll. Ignoramuses on the other hand..."

This post, coming later in the thread, achieved -45 votes. Both posters earned a temporary vacation from posting.

Our review of the new XCOM game certainly brought forth readers eager to downvote substance-free griping, and a few readers eager to provide that griping. The most downvoted post in the thread rated a -50, presumably because it, too, was substance free, with a dash of personal attack.

"Another Ars apologist review. This game is stream-lined, dumbed down, and XCOM in name only."

Apparently most readers were happy just to vote it down and move on to more interesting comments.

The same situation appears to be true of an all-too-common troll at Ars Technica: the one wherein all users of a certain OS or smart phone are branded as idiots/poor people/dorks/etc. This particular specimen appears in the thread under the story, "Survey says: iPhone 5 owners not bothered by iOS 6 Maps—are you?" In fact, there was a bit of a contest to see which trolling posts might take top honors as most downvoted in the thread. Weighing in at -67 was this pointless gem:

"When people buy a phone because they have more money than sense, you can wonder why a broken feature doesn't bother them."

Not far behind at -65 was another similarly brilliant post:

"Wait, many Apple users don't about anything except making sure they have the latest version so their friends will be impressed? Put that up there with water being wet."

These are, of course, classic, substance-free trolling posts. Personal attacks are not permitted at Ars, and when personal attacks morph into wholesale attacks on huge groups of people, they are even less tolerable. Intelligent discussion does not arise from them, because there's nothing of intelligence in them in the first place. And nota bene to the readers who think there is intelligence in them: find another site to read. Better yet, find a time machine and go back to the mid-90s when it was at least fashionable to troll usenet with this kind of stuff.

Emerging Trends

As we keep an eye on the most downvoted posts on the site, a few trends are clearly emerging. Certain kinds of posts are absolutely going to get downvoted. Here's a typology of bad posting behaviors, with an explanation/theory behind each of their arguments. It's a work in progress.

Son of the "I don't even own a TV" guy: This is the poster who thinks other people will find it interesting that he cares nothing about their discussion or their interests, and in fact judges himself as somehow morally superior as a result. The morphology of this on Ars Technica includes people popping into threads about Windows 8 to proclaim how they will never use Windows, people popping into threads about iOS 6 to proclaim that they never have and never will buy an Apple product, and people popping into Android related threads and claiming that they will never purchase "crappy plastic phones." In these cases, the posters have failed to understand that no one really cares what their personal disposition is on something, if they have nothing to add to the discussion.

The "I only know how to speak in hyperbole" guy: This poster is not always trying to troll, but it often looks like it. This is the individual who cannot introduce nuance into their point of view, but instead must use superlatives and extreme language in what I can only assume is an attempt to get attention. They typically love phrases like "worst ever," "new low," "complete fail," "absolute best," "going downhill," and the like. The broad, sloppy brush is the favorite tool of this poster. Closely related to this poster is this fella:

The "anybody who X is/does Y" guy: It never ceases to amaze me how many posters are willing to take one small facet of someone's life or identity (say, their choice in OS), and extrapolate from that all manner of ethical and moral criticisms, or perhaps more commonly, someone's intelligence.

The "Ars Technica is the worst site ever but I'll be back again tomorrow" guy: There's a handful of readers who simply dive into our comments to chastise us about how horrible we are, but of course they come back day after day. A variation on this is the "I can't stand your Apple coverage" guy, who nonetheless reads all of the Apple coverage and comments on it. Ditto for science, ditto for gaming, and other areas of the site. We've definitely noticed that these sorts of posts are getting downvoted as well.

The "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy: This is the guy we are trying to figure out how to protect. In the absence of trolling, we would prefer to see differences of opinion respected, and I will say that for the most part, we have not seen heavy downvoting of people merely because of their opinions. In the few instances we've observed so far, unpopular opinions have been downvoted when they were accompanied by other off-putting factors, such as those listed above. But it is not uncommon to see a respectable but differing opinion sitting somewhere with -10 votes. On the one hand, that's not enough votes to put something in jeopardy of being collapsed, but on the other hand some readers are finding it demoralizing.

In all, we are pleasantly surprised by how well the system is working. It's not without its flaws, and we did note that this was an experiment from the outset. For the most part, we presently feel that collapsing a post is a suitable treatment for content that the community on the whole finds negative. Remember, to get to -20 votes, you have to have a net -20. Posts with 10 positive votes would thus require 30 negative votes, and so on. We are presently considering a few more tweaks to the collapse system, but we're not yet ready to discuss them. One thing is amazingly clear, however: readers are using the voting system in a very intense way. I believe we are close to seeing 20,000 votes a day, and that number has continued to grow each day we are publishing. Best of all, more votes are being cast up than down, which means the community is trying to lift what it likes best.

The "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy: This is the guy we are trying to figure out how to protect. [...] some readers are finding it demoralizing.

I haven't read all the comments (nor do I intend to try now that the comments are so numerous), but I think it is also important to remember the guy you are trying to protect may encompass the guy who also sometimes acts the ass in other comments.

Readers and active comment participants may be remembering the guy for his excessive display of unfriendly/incendiary comments elsewhere and find it easy to no-vote them; others might find it easy to down-vote them due to differing opinion.

In the end, I suspect the system is probably working even better than anticipated in many cases.

297 Reader Comments

You guys should take notice of http://tweakers.net/It's the biggest and busiest Dutch tech blog out there. They use a similar downvoting system like Ars with collapsable topics etc. but what I like about their system: When a topic gets upvoted a lot, it turns green. This makes it extremely handy to do a quick scan of the comments. You could also consider adding a filter that ranks on comment rating of course.

If you go back to the first page of comments, you should notice that the top post is marked as a "reader favorite"...oddly, enough, with a green tag. Just a side-note, really, but Ars has done a lot with the color gamut of their comments recently. Pink for new posters, yellow for staff-picked comments, orange for author comments, grey for staff comments, and now green for reader-comments.

I guess the point I'm trying to get across is this: I expect a site like apple insider to have digs at android in their articles, or vice versa at phandroid, (to use the smartphone wars as an example, there are many other groups that this is true of here) but i would expect a site like this to have more objectivity from their authors, even if that author is assigned to cover one camp or the other.

That is precisely the source of Ars Technica's bias. Writers who like Apple tend to know about Apple and they cover Apple news. Writers who aren't into Apple, cover something else. Bias creeping in is inevitable in that situation. I have seen this happen at so many blogs, even in blogs that I helped edit, that it is instantly recognisable. And you know what? It's not a big deal, as long as they have critical readers who point out errors and bias in the coverage when and where they occur. I consider this activity as doing Ars Technica a service. Such readers should be welcomed. Only a website with an overweeningly arrogant sense of its own objectivity would seek to alienate such readers.

Then the results would be a reflection of what the mods thought, not what the users thought. If, to use your example, Libertarian comments are horribly unpopular/unwelcome here then shouldn't the votes reflect that?

Either leave the results alone, or get rid of the system.

Uh, no. That's the point. Protecting unpopular, but well-spoken and articulate opinions is one of the goals. It doesn't matter if every other person on this site hates libertarians, if a person is contributing their ideas in a manner commensurate with good discussion, they deserve to be given the opportunity to engage in the discussion without being downvoted.

Hence the discussion of the tyranny of majority, and factionalism. The goal of the system, I believe, is to highlight people making genuine contributions and to hide people causing disruption. A person expressing themselves, even if everyone disagrees with them, should be given a chance to speak.

That's the whole point of having a mod save, or a community-leader save. It's not about "oh, I agree with them", it's about "is this person trying to troll, or not"? If they're not trolling, if they simply do not have a popular view, then shouting them down with votes is much, much worse for the community than having a mod save a post.

Clearly, you don't want mods simply saving positions they agree with, but that's not the point. The question is: is what this person said offensive enough to be hidden?

Here, I'll make an example: let's say instead of up/down, it was favorite/report. You could favorite the post or report it as spam/trolling/whatever. After 20 reports of trolling, it would be hidden, and flagged for moderator intervention. If a moderator looks and it's not trolling or spam, they restore it. Would you consider that an "endorsement", or simply a restoration of a comment that was flagged wrongly?

The up/down vote should not be used as a system to silence dissent. It is a tool, in my mind, designed to engage with the tenor of the post, and not necessarily the opinion expressed therein. In other words, it shouldn't be used to judge whether or not you agree with the person, but rather whether you agree with the way they conduct themselves in the discussion.

Operative Alex wrote:

The up/down vote should not be used as a system to silence dissent. It is a tool, in my mind, designed to engage with the tenor of the post, and not necessarily the opinion expressed therein.

On how many sites does that actually work as intended? I've yet to see it not become a popularity contest on any site with a good sized readership. Might as well face up to it from the start.

Operative Alex wrote:

If a moderator looks and it's not trolling or spam, they restore it. Would you consider that an "endorsement", or simply a restoration of a comment that was flagged wrongly? "

If comments from the same poster or reflecting the same viewpoint are frequently restored I'd begin to wonder. And probably before I reached that point we'd have the more conspiracy prone types insisting that was the case.

And who's definition of trolling would be used? Sure a lot of it is obvious, but what about a post defending something like Creationism? Would it matter how well it was written or is the fact it was posted here at all a show of intent to troll?

Or again, going back to the original post and its mention of Libertarian posts... How do you handle a debate involving politics, where so much of it is subjective and lacking in hard facts for all parties involved? They tend to get heated and full of accusations that can be hard to prove or disprove. Who are the trolls and who are being honest? And you know there will be a shitstorm over what posts are and aren't "mod saved".

Honestly I don't see letting the mods get involved doing anything but making a questionable idea worse.

Bummer. Ars comments are turning into Reddit. Personally I think it was a bummer that Gizmodo got rid of their older commenting system. Like stars and what not. It makes sure that only people with interesting/good stuff to say show up in the comments.

"unpopular but sincere opinion" guy naturally dies when you let the masses vote people down. The system is a popularity contest, and naturally the unpopular lose, regardless of whether they're logical, or even objectively right.

Not so sure about that. The thing is, whoever has time and can be bothered enough to post a reader comment, will do so, no matter what kind of vote they get. See, in my opinion, commenting is just a way of sharing an opinion, and in most cases, the commenter does not really care about the response it gets. It's inherently selfish. You do it to see your thoughts in writing in a public place (obviously, it does apply to myself as well). Getting up or downvoted is just a side effect. Trolls still will troll, genuinely interested readers will still post meaningful opinions (or try), etc.

One thing I haven't seen yet in the comments is this: If you see a hidden comment with -162, you'll be absolutely drawn to open it, just to see what merited such an amount of negative response. It's like slowing down when driving by a road accident, oogling stupidly at the smashed cars. You know it's stupid, but you can't help it.

You seem to have no trouble artfully dissecting the reason that comments receive a pitiful -45, yet you refuse to even consider that there is any REAL substance or reason to a comment that receives an overwhelming +79?

No, you are simply missing the point of the relevance of such votes to headlines. I'm not going to repeat myself, especially since I already directed you to the appropriate place to complain about that headline. We stand by that headline, and offer no apology for it. Regardless of the # of votes. We don't do our editorial by committee. Not only is it impossible post-facto, but you already have the power in this relationship. You can just chose not to read the editorial if you don't want to.

On how many sites does that actually work as intended? I've yet to see it not become a popularity contest on any site with a good sized readership. Might as well face up to it from the start.

Hence the point of allowing mods to un-hide a post. It doesn't work as intended because people abuse the system to hide viewpoints they don't like (in addition to the real purpose). Having a backup system that allows a limited number of more objective people to un-hide a post is the solution to this problem.

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If comments from the same poster or reflecting the same viewpoint are frequently restored I'd begin to wonder. And probably before I reached that point we'd have the more conspiracy prone types insisting that was the case.

They can insist all they want, but that doesn't make it true. If a person or viewpoint is routinely restored and they're not trolling, then that is the system working as intended. Because nobody should be silenced for having unpopular views. They should be silenced for acting like an asshat when expressing their opinion-- even if their opinion is popular.

Sure a lot of it is obvious, but what about a post defending something like Creationism? Would it matter how well it was written or is the fact it was posted here at all a show of intent to troll?

It would matter how well it was written. That's the point. I'm ardently against creationism being taught in schools. But if you're a creationist able to participate in the discussion without falling astray of the guidelines, then more power to you. I will disagree with you, and attempt to show you that you're wrong. But you have the same right to speak here as I do. Unpopular opinions are not inherently trolls. They are, more likely, people with bad opinions.

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Or again, going back to the original post and its mention of Libertarian posts... How do you handle a debate involving politics, where so much of it is subjective and lacking in hard facts for all parties involved? They tend to get heated and full of accusations that can be hard to prove or disprove. Who are the trolls and who are being honest? And you know there will be a shitstorm over what posts are and aren't "mod saved".

It's handled by applying the posting guidelines. Does it violate the posting guidelines? If yes, leave it hidden. If not, expand it. It is the free exchange of ideas that makes comments worth the while. If you advocate for silencing dissent, you are actively encouraging group-think.

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Honestly I don't see letting the mods get involved doing anything but making a questionable idea worse.

You have a set of guidelines and community full of active, intelligent participants. Encouraging the silencing of dissent actively goes against the idea of a community of equals. If I'm attacking you personally and flaming you, but my opinion is more popular, I'd rather see ME silenced than you. That's why mods are important. They can restore a good discussion by removing the dog-pile downvotes. That's it. Does it violate the guidelines? No? Restore it.

They have a standard to go off of. The real question is: why are you so convinced that they would apply it unequally?

I think the system is good. I have not yet seen a hidden post with honest well thought out opinion, I have seen unpopular votes for unpopular positions but never have I seen it to the point of hidden. I think people will moderate the use of voting (giving upvoting to unagreed with unpopular positions) to allow unpopular to stay in view. People will moderate themselves and this will all work out for the better.

The people with unpopular opinions know they are unpopular and expect some negative voting, for the better it will force them to be thoughtful about their positions, with less boring fanboi'ism...making a better discussion.

The incredible number of down votes on that Mars post has as much to do with Ars as it does with the post's trolling style. Yes, the post is not offering constructive feedback to the thread and is a troll. But I made a constructive and positive post in one of the Mars rover threads a bit ago that included a harmless mention of my own thoughts on NASA spending and I got dog piled like I've never been. There seems to be an extreme defensiveness about this here.

I guess the point I'm trying to get across is this: I expect a site like apple insider to have digs at android in their articles, or vice versa at phandroid, (to use the smartphone wars as an example, there are many other groups that this is true of here) but i would expect a site like this to have more objectivity from their authors, even if that author is assigned to cover one camp or the other.

That is precisely the source of Ars Technica's bias. Writers who like Apple tend to know about Apple and they cover Apple news. Writers who aren't into Apple, cover something else. Bias creeping in is inevitable in that situation. I have seen this happen at so many blogs, even in blogs that I helped edit, that it is instantly recognisable. And you know what? It's not a big deal, as long as they have critical readers who point out errors and bias in the coverage when and where they occur. I consider this activity as doing Ars Technica a service. Such readers should be welcomed. Only a website with an overweeningly arrogant sense of its own objectivity would seek to alienate such readers.

True. but due to reader bias for those articles, and the self-professed attitude about such comments in this article, Ars seems to be right on course to do exactly that. There are valid examples just with the moderation system, before comment voting, of commenters calling the writers objectivity into question and getting banned.

I even got a warning for calling the author out on one of these, for "discussing moderation in thread." To me, if the person who got moded talks about it, that's justified, but if another readers calls it out, it should be valid discussion.

You guys should take notice of http://tweakers.net/It's the biggest and busiest Dutch tech blog out there. They use a similar downvoting system like Ars with collapsable topics etc. but what I like about their system: When a topic gets upvoted a lot, it turns green. This makes it extremely handy to do a quick scan of the comments. You could also consider adding a filter that ranks on comment rating of course.

If you go back to the first page of comments, you should notice that the top post is marked as a "reader favorite"...oddly, enough, with a green tag. Just a side-note, really, but Ars has done a lot with the color gamut of their comments recently. Pink for new posters, yellow for staff-picked comments, orange for author comments, grey for staff comments, and now green for reader-comments.

Yeah I noticed these tags as well. I prefer the Tweakers.net solution though where the complete post gets colored green and where they use different shades of it to mark popularity. They also allow for 5 grades of rating vs simple up or down (not sure which to prefer) and you can sort posts by ranking, which is very handy.

Ars would learn even more if it allowed users the option of upvoting or downvoting articles (and headlines). I think that some of the clickbaity headlines we've seen recently would receive more downvotes than all the comments combined.

Here's why we're not interested in this kind of voting at this time:1. Most important, I've never talked to an editor at another site who found this kind of feedback useful. 2. Users with accounts at Ars are only 4% of the audience, and not a statistically viable sample. Trends we see from the commenting community are vastly different from, say, Twitter, or email, or other feedback mechanisms.3. Traffic analysis (which is pageviews plus bounce-rates plus offsite links, and other trends) gives us much better insight into what people want to read.4. One person's factual headline is another person's link-bait. At the end of the day, we make the editorial calls on headlines, and readers sort of take it or leave it.

I'm not saying we've ruled it out entirely, but this community would have to be in much better shape before I'd consider it further.

I would add

5. The comments themselves give the authors/editors a much better critique of their articles than a simple up or down vote ever could.

Such readers should be welcomed. Only a website with an overweeningly arrogant sense of its own objectivity would seek to alienate such readers.

They are welcomed. We have comments for a reason, you know. We don't need them. We could turn them off.

As I noted in the article, our main challenge is protecting unpopular but good expressions of opinion. But no, we're not interested in creating a home for trolls and assholes. It's really, really clear from the feedback that most of the audience agrees with me that there people who are ruining the discussion by being jerks.

Interestingly, the purpose of the system originally was to really promote the best content, and weed out trolls. It turns out that the troll weeding is the part that is harder to do, because plenty of people mistake being jerks with "providing a service" to us. As someone else pointed out, it's entirely possible to be critical without being trollish about it, or engaging in personal attacks. And no, that's not too much to ask of people.

The insight that the "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy gives is that downvoting has 2 meanings.

* Bad comment - doesn't belong here

and

* I disagree with this

Downvoting and discouraging contrarian points of view is a disservice to the discussion. Contrarians can enhance arguments and provide a cure to echo chamber effects. Contrarians are the antidote to group think.

Further, contrarians can't participate in reputation systems. A low or negative reputation is considered 'trollish' not 'contrarianish'.

If voting were Agree/Disagree (instead of Up/Down) and default comment threads showed both columns side-by-side then perhaps the contrarian points of view wouldn't be so discouraged. But that won't solve the reputation problem.

Flagging spam is also a better community solution to downvoting spam. Perhaps flagging contrarians could help the discussion too. In that case, the contrarian flag becomes a badge of honor instead of shame.

Ars doesn't have a reputation system so having a post downvoted in one article doesn't affect their 'reputation' unless they are consistent trolls and gain the attention of moderators. Ars is extremely forgiving of posters that aren't outright trolls and consistent troublemakers.

You make out being a 'contrarian' to be a noble pursuit in service of rhetoric, when many posters who are contrarian are going against the thread do it for the thrill. They get attention, and they don't really care if it's positive or negative.

I'd like too to see a separation of the down button, being one for I disagree, and another for a "this post sucks", so we could mark who's just trolling, and still be able to disagree with someone's opinion without making it disappear...

In the article about the refunds for Kindle books due to the DoJ settlement, A poster make a disparaging remark about the pittance most consumers are getting back. I responded, pointing out that the injunction also prevents further harm, and that breaking cartels is a good thing.

At first, it was up-voted a bit. But now, it's at a net negative despite being on point, concise, and contributing.

So, why? Because of simple disagreement by either Apple fans or people who don't like government? And by how much? All I see if the net result of -1 despite knowing at least six votes are there.

I would prefer a system like the one suggested by other posters above. Simple +1 for an up-vote, but select from options for a down.

I don't like this system. Both this and the foe list feel to me as crutches for people to avoid having to do a minimum exertion of willpower ignoring/not reading posts they don't like. It also seems prone to clique mentality and outright community censorship, as illustrated with Ken's The "unpopular but sincere opinion" guy cathegory, and the post collapsing does not help matters. As a result, I will not use these tools.

However, given that this unfortunately does not seem likely to be removed anytime soon, I appreciate that the Ars staff is open about the situation, and at least provides us with an official channel to pour our concerns on. With that in mind, I would like to second andyfatbastard's advice to change the downvoting collapsing limit from a hard value (no matter which it is) to a ratio between positive and negative votes. It's still not perfect, but a much better alternative in my opinion.

What if you made the score a link to a menu/applet that shows the count for +/- and allows you to choose between some common responses? Something like

+1 best comment ever+2 made me think+2 vote-up <- this is where default up votes go-5 +6 <- this is where mouse/default is -- no vote- 3 vote-down <- this is where default down votes go- 1 interesting but...- 1 off topic/troll

Then people can vote quickly by pushing up/down, and those that choose to classify their vote will help differentiate between unpopular-but-sincere-opinion-guy and the jerks.

I think the problem with a lot of these "tell us why you're downvoting" ideas is that lots of people either don't think to hard about it or convince themselves that someone is a troll when they're not. I have seen a lot of people get labelled as trolls when there wasn't much (or any) trollishness in their posts. The "I'm downvoting because I disagree!" urge isn't always something the voter wants to examine critically.

What if you made the score a link to a menu/applet that shows the count for +/- and allows you to choose between some common responses? Something like

+1 best comment ever+2 made me think+2 vote-up <- this is where default up votes go-5 +6 <- this is where mouse/default is -- no vote- 3 vote-down <- this is where default down votes go- 1 interesting but...- 1 off topic/troll

Then people can vote quickly by pushing up/down, and those that choose to classify their vote will help differentiate between unpopular-but-sincere-opinion-guy and the jerks.

I doubt anything that requires more then one click will work. Else fb or google would've done it already to get more data on what adds to force-feed you...

First, thanks for looking at this. However I agree with a number of posters that there is some confusion on the purpose of up vs. down. Fundamentally, I think in readers' minds the up/down vote is overloaded—it means both like/dislike and helpful/unhelpful.

I, personally, would find a system with both an like/dislike and a thoughtful/unhelpful vote buttons interesting. This would enable the community to distinguish between the content of the opinions and the quality of the discourse, and would communicate more information to both ars staff and comment readers. I could see myself voting dislike and helpful on a number of posts, giving a way to express the emotional response of disagreeing while also communicating that I thought the post was well reasoned or a good part of the discussion. Just an idea for allowing clearer communication without too much overhead.

The hope of avoiding the downrating of differing opinions might be solved by making a 3 option vote. Agree, disagree, and troll. Disagrees don't hide, but trolling does. Might also help discover who needs banning or suspension. You might even highlight the most disagreed comments, kinda like how amazon shows the most helpful positive and negative review of a product. I think if the main point of rating is to clear out the trolls, then we must call a spade a spade. Unfortunately, more options means more complication or room for abuse.

The article was about downvotes, because 90% of the complaints about the system are about the downvotes. Should be pretty obvious.

Just out of curiosity... how are these complaints relayed? Do people actually email mod@ars or is there a thread somewhere that I've missed? I always find it surprising that people can be so worked up about some internet argument that they'll actually take the trouble to take it to email!

One of the benefits of 1st Amendment free speech in the US is that people nursing serious anti-govt grudges can get up on a soapbox and rant about why income taxes are illegal; the Vietnam war is ilegal (and wrong), etc., and get feedback about how interested the populace at large is.

Versus going to a cabin in Montana and sending letter bombs, or plotting to murder some black kids because States Rights. Obviously imperfect, but I'm still convinced that expression of unpopular opinion — and feedback about it — is just as important to comments as it is to the country. Downvotes are but a small step in that direction.

I really tire of the references to the First Amendment. Ars is not a government and Ken is not (really) the Imperator. He's inviting you to swim in his pool, and is within his rights to kick you out if you piss in it.

Quote:

Take

Quote:

"When people buy a phone because they have more money than sense, you can wonder why a broken feature doesn't bother them."

I think that those who reflexively complain that "Ars" is turning into Slashdot/Reddit/Other are missing an important point that was made earlier in the thread:

Quote:

Users with accounts at Ars are only 4% of the audience, and not a statistically viable sample. Trends we see from the commenting community are vastly different from, say, Twitter, or email, or other feedback mechanisms.

The comments play an important, and yet relatively small role among all the factors that go into defining who and what 'Ars' really is.

With that in mind, I would like to second andyfatbastard's advice to change the downvoting collapsing limit from a hard value (no matter which it is) to a ratio between positive and negative votes. It's still not perfect, but a much better alternative in my opinion.

To be clear, what you're suggesting would still involve a "hard value." I think what you mean is "fixed difference threshold." And whether the comparator is a difference or a ratio, it could still be a fixed or dynamic threshold. And the formula for all this would involve several variables.

It is not evident that the voting algorithm needs to be so complicated.

The problem at hand is the quality of thread comments. The solution you're advocating doesn't solve that problem, it simply gives posts a score to be analyzed. Believe me, I'm deeply curious about my post scores and I would e competitive about it given the chance, but that's not what all this is about.

It's a simple matter of whether a simple majority finds the post to be useful or not useful. Gaming the system with complex metrics isn't necessary.

Here's why we're not interested in [voting on articles] at this time:<snip>

I'm not saying we've ruled it out entirely, but this community would have to be in much better shape before I'd consider it further.

You've noted before that you're concerned about protecting your writers and their morale from the vitriol of the community. But then why subject commentators to that same vitriol at all? Your stance makes sense given your job as EIC (i.e. keep your employees happy and making changes that grow the site), but also has a touch of hypocrisy.

I have always been impressed with the discussions here, the low S/N ratio, the general civility and relative paucity of trolls. I despise trolls.

And now I find out I am one.

Yes, I'm the (or one of the) I don't own a TV guy(s). Let me offer my most sincere apology. Seriously. I never meant to be obnoxious, never wanted to pee on anybody's parade. My thinking was to offer a tested alternative to all the complaining about the state of TV, but I don't think it went over very well. As a researcher it is my job to look for alternatives and to test them; it's a habit.

So I'm sorry if I was tedious. I'll take my lumps and continue to enjoy the discussion, and I'll think thrice before I post. And thanks to the new system, I'll know when others think I'm out of line.

One thing I'd like to see is a "jump to next tagged comment" button, so I could go through the Staff / Story Author / Reader's choice comments without having to scan through every page.

It would also be good to have some sort of weighting for the number of plus / minus votes needed to mark / collapse the post based on which page of the comments it's on. No comment on Page 4 is likely to ever hit +/- 20, no matter how good / trollish it is.

Edit: The first five posts on this article are all at +/- 20 or greater. Not a single post on this page has made the threshold. This system is clearly elevating / hiding the first posts, not the best posts.

Such readers should be welcomed. Only a website with an overweeningly arrogant sense of its own objectivity would seek to alienate such readers.

...

Interestingly, the purpose of the system originally was to really promote the best content, and weed out trolls. It turns out that the troll weeding is the part that is harder to do, because plenty of people mistake being jerks with "providing a service" to us.

I think it's pretty clear that one big reason we're having these discussions is to try to refine the system so unpopular but cogent opinions don't get squelched, while making sure trolls do.

Right.

But as someone wise once told me, never complicate with technology what can be simplified with policy.

Look, this is what we make it. All we have to do is use this in the way we want to see it used. To make sure valid but unpopular opinions are voted up, just vote them up. To make sure trolls get voted down, vote them down.

In general, I suspect comments about pissing contests and popularity contests seem more likely to betray the plaintiff's attitudes than to reflect any actual data about voting activity, since only the site operators have complete information about voting activity, and any given commenter knows only his or her own mind.

Frankly, the simple solution to this problem is for commenters with valid but unpopular opinions to carefully articulate their position so as to further discussion, and not simply to be contrarians pretending to be skeptics.

I think the system is good. I have not yet seen a hidden post with honest well thought out opinion, I have seen unpopular votes for unpopular positions but never have I seen it to the point of hidden. I think people will moderate the use of voting (giving upvoting to unagreed with unpopular positions) to allow unpopular to stay in view. People will moderate themselves and this will all work out for the better.

The people with unpopular opinions know they are unpopular and expect some negative voting, for the better it will force them to be thoughtful about their positions, with less boring fanboi'ism...making a better discussion.

That comment is nearly gone, but in the whole comments that was one of the few that wasn't posted by some arrogant 'sys-admin type' with his jolly jape about how he actually has time to waste trolling scammers rather than just (politely) putting the phone down and warning friends/relative, rather than a well written insight into what might drive some of the scammers beyond just money. I'm not saying cniru was right or wrong, just that I valued his alternative view. A view that now has -19 votes and is nearly gone.

Maybe people with popular opinions might be as well to question them too! Maybe more so?

Wheels Of Confusion wrote:

I think the problem with a lot of these "tell us why you're downvoting" ideas is that lots of people either don't think to hard about it or convince themselves that someone is a troll when they're not. I have seen a lot of people get labelled as trolls when there wasn't much (or any) trollishness in their posts. The "I'm downvoting because I disagree!" urge isn't always something the voter wants to examine critically.

And that is exactly why they should have to justify it. If you want to disagree with someones facts or points or view, you should at least have to provide a rebutal, alternative point of view or correction of the facts. In fact if you want to agree you should maybe need to say why. That helps us all learn, and appreciate other points of view and worldviews.

DeChicago wrote:

papadage wrote:

But now, it's at a net negative despite being on point, concise, and contributing.

Why is it so important to some that the community share the same reverence and awe for their opinions that they themselves hold?

That's not how life works.

You are right, that is not how life works. But he still has a potentially valid view that is being hidden or suppressed.

deet wrote:

Jim Z wrote:

I think it's pretty clear that one big reason we're having these discussions is to try to refine the system so unpopular but cogent opinions don't get squelched, while making sure trolls do.

Right.

But as someone wise once told me, never complicate with technology what can be simplified with policy.

Frankly, the simple solution to this problem is for commenters with valid but unpopular opinions to carefully articulate their position so as to further discussion, and not simply to be contrarians pretending to be skeptics.

Why have policy at all? You could also argue the other way, and say that technology via an open algorithm (ie one that is published so all can inspect it) is more objective, even if it is more complicated and/or flawed.

So people with valid but unpopular views have to work harder to be heard?

blobusus wrote:

I have always been impressed with the discussions here, the low S/N ratio, the general civility and relative paucity of trolls. I despise trolls.

And now I find out I am one.

Yes, I'm the (or one of the) I don't own a TV guy(s). Let me offer my most sincere apology. Seriously. I never meant to be obnoxious, never wanted to pee on anybody's parade. My thinking was to offer a tested alternative to all the complaining about the state of TV, but I don't think it went over very well. As a researcher it is my job to look for alternatives and to test them; it's a habit.

So I'm sorry if I was tedious. I'll take my lumps and continue to enjoy the discussion, and I'll think thrice before I post. And thanks to the new system, I'll know when others think I'm out of line.

Like this one. (I assume he didn't have the sarcasm tag on). Here is a guy who feels he has a valid point of view, and sounds like he maybe did, who will now re-consider his opinion to see if it will pass the 'popularity test'. When it is probably all of us who need to engage our brains before speaking/typing.

By the way @blobusus, I don't own a TV either. Just for the sake of disclosure, so you all know what type of person I am!

--------------------------------------------------------------

I've just spent the last hour looking back over some of the comment streams, and it comes across as a popularity contest to me too. I'd like to see any analysis of why comments get upvoted too. It looks to my (subjective) view like they are often populist/witty comments as often as they are interesting and knowledgeable views.

I hated popularity contests in school. I hated them in uni. I hate them in the workplace. What I value is a broad range of views even when I disagree with them. Nothing in life is black and white, often even science has shades of gray. If we are to grow as people we need to understand the shades of grey, even if we end up having to make a black and white call at the end of the day.

This article did get me thinking, and I have noticed that I have pretty much stopped reading the comments section since the voting system was introduced. It was the breadth and quality of comments and discussion that followed the superb articles that first brought me here. Like Slashdot in the early days I didn't dare comment as the comments were so erudite and well thought out. It doesn't feel that way now! I'm not learning anything, I might be amused, but my brain and worldview is not being challenged and expanded.

I'd rather you got rid of the voting system and allowing each of us to do our own filtering. If you want to get rid of the trolls, you just hide them according to your own tastes. How hard is that? If you must keep it, then some variation of the ratio idea discussed above seems reasonable.

But yes, good that Ars is discussing this with Ken regularly chiming in.

I hope the "I don't even own a TV guy" applies to Internet Explorer here as well. I don't believe there is such a thing as an IE thread on the whole internet that doesn't have a group of people saying they don't use IE, etc. with nothing relevant to add to the topic of the particular thread, it's almost like an internet version of the Unicorn. You hear about it a lot, but never see it. Ars has the right attitude on the subject, but how many haters is Ars willing to piss off because they can't mindlessly spam any more?

For the sincere but unpopular opinion guy, maybe Ars moderators could, when they casually read a thread, mark a post as 'protected' if they suspect it's unpopular but don't find it trollish, so it can't be collapsed by the angry mob..

I don't see that as a good idea, what's the point of having a voting system if a Mod can overrule it. All it does is make a protected class of comments which will get interpreted as endorsed by the staff. It also is pretty open to abuse since it would allow the protection of a commenter and/or a particular viewpoint.

It's supposed to be an endorsement, an endorsement that the post is not a troll. Anyways, if you're that suspicious of the motives of the Ars staff, you probably read the wrong site. They already have arbitrary power to delete posts, fake votes, help shills, etc. I don't see any of this as a worthwhile discussion however, just pointing it out because of what I perceive as selective paranoia in your post.

Glad to see a good breakdown, you dont always realize when your victim of your own cognitive dissonance and fall into one of these categories (I'm sure ive been categorized as all of these at one point). Glad Ars is observing the comments =p

Ken Fisher / Ken is the founder & Editor-in-Chief of Ars Technica. A veteran of the IT industry and a scholar of antiquity, Ken studies the emergence of intellectual property regimes and their effects on culture and innovation.